Ooh it’s my first blog post! Been meaning to have a proper blog for ages and now I’ve finally got one. I’m not the sharpest tool when it comes to the technical stuff and it’s taken me most of the day to work out how to get my page to look just so. Now I must post something so that it feels like I’m off the starting blocks. (mmm, topical metaphor there).

But I’m not here to go on about the Olympic Games, fabulous though they are (did you see the cauldron being lit? Wow! And the Queen!). No, this blog is all about creativity and design. I design things in yarn. Mostly cakes.

The Flower Cupcake

A while ago I wanted to knit a cupcake. I googled like mad for a pattern, but didn’t find any that were quite right. There were some very good designs out there, but they either did not have the detail I was looking for, or the construction involved sewing together various little pieces. Now, as a lifelong knitter, I know that knitting is the fun part. The sewing and seaming is a pain, a necessary evil that all knitters have to take in their stride at some time. Or the project might never be finished. Unless it’s a scarf. That’s why there are hundreds, no, probably thousands, of unfinished projects stashed away in drawers and attics the world over.

So I set about designing the ultimate knitted cupcake. Starting from the bottom, I made an attempt with no seam at all, working in the round on 4 double pins. But I came unstuck when I got to the top and had to think about inserting a cardboard disc and stuffing. It didn’t work. So then I decided to aim for one piece with one seam. I still had to use a couple of double pins in the first few rows, to allow for the multiple increases, but I found I could switch back to 2 needles once I’d worked the sides.

Then I had a brainwave. A picot edge would nicely suggest the crimped sides of the cupcake case. So I did a ‘pick up and knit’ on the last row of white, and worked a 2-stitch picot all around. All I had to do now was to cut a cardboard disc to snugly fit the bottom, stuff, and sew one little seam. Then a flower and a bead to finish.

Using this basic construction, more designs followed. Obviously I had to knit a butterfly cake:

The Butterfly Cupcake

Then, inspired by the pattern of 8 decreases per row on the cupcake top, the Spider Cupcake followed:

The Spider Cupcake

I never thought I’d be knitting cute spiders to decorate toy cakes. On a bit of a roll, I then produced the Rainbow Ladybird Cupcake, Goodness knows where this came from:

Ladybird Cupcake

Oops, forgot to do the picot edging on that one. More of a bun, then. I had a lot of fun making these bug-topped items.

I made a few more pink flowery-type cupcakes and the obligatory Christmas Cupcake, but the Flower Cupcake was the first design and turned out to be the bestseller. So far I have only sold the patterns, not the finished items. This is simply because I don’t have time to knit a lot of cupcakes and I would get bored making more or less the same thing over and over again. Besides, I get the biggest kick from working out the details of a design within the limitations of some yarn and two needles. So, on to the next design!

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I design knitted items. Mostly cakes. I live with a man and 3 cats. I am a raw feeder and an atheist. I work full-time. There is a piano recording studio in my living room. There is cat hair in my knitting. The cats and the knitting keep me sane.